Outdoor adventurers throng to Yorkshire Dales National Park, while a neighbouring, equally stunning valley is overlooked by most visitors.Dixe Wills enjoys the tranquil autumn treasures of Nidderdale
Photos: Stephen Garnett
DISCOVER
You’ve got to do it first.” Heather, the helpful assistant in the Pateley Bridge tourist office, had seen me looking admiringly at a bowl of enamelled badges that proclaimed ‘Nidderdale Way – 53 miles’. “If you want one, you’ll have to come back at the end and show me the mud on your trousers.”
As its name suggests, the circular and mostly off-road Nidderdale Way (recently extended to 54 miles) provides an excellent means of exploring the eponymous dale. The most south-easterly of the Yorkshire Dales, Nidderdale is the only one not included in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Its exclusion has been somewhat controversial and, after several attempts to incorporate the dale, a compromise led to the designation of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1994. The upside to this apparent snub is that Nidderdale largely remains a secret waiting to be discovered.
The route of the Nidderdale Way resembles the outline of a boomerang, with Pateley Bridge – home to England’s oldest sweet shop – in the middle. The bijou market town (population 1,400)
is Nidderdale’s largest settlement and, being easily accessible by bus from Harrogate station, provided me with my starting point. I found my first waymarker and forged out along the River Nidd up the narrowing valley.
BRILLIANT START
‘Nidd’ comes from an old Celtic word meaning ‘brilliant’. It was apt, therefore, that the sun should show its face at the very moment I had my first sweeping view of the upper dale. I’d gained some height shortly after Wath, where I had consoled myself at being too early to explore the ivy-clad Sportsman’s Arms (see box, page 29) by visiting the hamlet’s tiny and almost triangular Wesleyan chapel, complete with harmonium.
If I’m completely honest, I gained precisely the same height twice after Wath, having somehow managed to walk almost a mile before realising I had left most of my possessions behind in the chapel. It meant I got a double helping of the vista afforded by the lower slopes of Light Hill, which takes in much of what the upper dale is all about.
Immediately below lay Gouthwaite Reservoir. One of three large bodies of water in
